Page 70 of All I Want for Christmas

Darcy’s eyes roamed the image. The garden was mature, with orchard trees and clumps of silver birches dotting the further reaches of the lawn; a brick gate pillar was just cominginto shot and a body of water – a lake? – shimmered at the top right edge. Lilja’s companion, and sister-in-law, Sofie was looking to camera, like the men, but Lilja’s gaze was slightly averted towards something over the photographer’s shoulder. A child? A dog? A car? The possibilities were endless and even here the woman, captured in a still, seemed to move somehow. Elusive.

‘Of course, we must not rush to conclusions,’ Viggo said cautiously. ‘Lilja, in this photograph, may not be the woman in the portrait simply because she is wearing the same necklace. They might have been friends.’

Darcy nodded. It was indeed conceivable Lilja could have loaned the necklace to the woman to wear during the sittings, or given it to her following a chance compliment. Or it could be that everything was the other way round and it was Lilja who had been gifted or loaned the necklace by the woman in the portrait. If Lilja was married to Casper Madsen, the son of Johan Trier’s patron, she had surely come into contact with many of the women he painted? She might even have recommended him to her own friends.

‘I agree,’ Darcy murmured. She had to consider all hypotheses. ‘We mustn’t get carried away. This might not be an ending to the mystery, but a middle. We’ll need to see where the evidence leads.’ She looked over at Viggo and gave an excited smile. ‘But at least we’re no longer stuck at the beginning.’

‘Indeed.’

The necklace had led her to a name, and that was a solid start, but she needed more information to help build the story. She wondered where that garden was – clearly not Copenhagen. She would have to find out.

‘I must tell Otto.’

Max, standing behind them, said nothing. He didn’t sharetheir academic fervour; he was a businessman, concerned with profits and gains. To him, this woman’s name simply added to the legend of a painting that was a national asset. But to Darcy, this was a whole life found again. A woman who’d been quite literally locked in the dark for a century was feeling air on her painted face once more. Darcy remembered something she’d read once: that the dead are only truly forgotten once their name is uttered for the last time.

Well, this woman wasn’t dead yet. She was coming alive again. And it might just be that Johan Trier was going to give her the gift of immortality.

‘Pleased to meet you, Lilja,’ she murmured. ‘It’s about bloody time.’

‘Thanks, Christoff,’ Max murmured. ‘To the Royal Academy.’

The driver nodded, closing the door with a sedatethunk.

Darcy looked around at the plush interior – blonde leather, tinted windows, walnut trim. The two back seats were separated by a console with bottled water and a control suite that wouldn’t have been out of place on an A380.

Max checked his phone quickly before slipping it back into his jacket pocket. ‘Helle’s going to meet us there.’ He’d been making calls too while Darcy had been talking to Otto.

‘Really?’ Her nerves were beginning to rise as it was; she hadn’t expected a full-on meeting to be called on the back of the potential identification. It was bad enough that Otto had called in Margit, without Helle Foss’s scrutiny too. Max was accompanying her because she was taking source material off site. ‘Why?’ she had asked him, holding the file Viggo had given her on her lap. ‘It’s not a Madsen issue. And nothing’s confirmed yet; Lilja Madsen may not be the woman in the portrait. This could turn out to be a false alarm.’

‘Or it might not – in which case the Madsen name is implicated, and we have a right to know.’

Darcy glanced at him, remembering Otto’s warnings. They all wanted the same thing – but were on different teams. ‘You want the portrait?’

‘I want whatever will continue to grow, drive and protect the Madsen brand name. No one can deny this discovery – with or withoutHer Children– is pertinent to our interests,’ he said, holding her gaze without even blinking. His manner – so calm and unruffled – was quietly intimidating and she didn’t want to imagine what it must be like sitting opposite him at a conference table; but then she remembered him in his kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the papers; in his sweats and socks, watching the football on his iPad...She tried to remind herself he had his human moments too.

‘So that’s why you’ve been so unduly interested in my progress on this project, is it?’

‘...Unduly?’

She swallowed. ‘I know it’s not the insurers insisting on the working arrangement at your place. It’s you.’

His gaze was steady. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Viggo slipped up when we were talking.’

He looked away again, staring out of the window. ‘I see.’ It wasn’t a denial.

‘...So is it true? You’ve been keeping an eye on me because you can’t do your job until I’ve done mine?’

He was quiet for another moment. ‘...Exactly, Darcy,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what it was.’

They sank into silence as the car pulled out into the traffic and Darcy stared out of her own window, trying, for once, to move her mind away from him. She had to focus. Sheneeded to plot her next steps for researching the young Mrs Casper Madsen. Margit would want not just details, but a plan.

She watched the city slink past, muted and tinted bronze. Everything felt different inside here, as if she had been hermetically sealed in a parallel world.

Beside her, Max checked his watch.

‘We’ve got half an hour before we need to be there,’ he murmured, seemingly thinking out loud. ‘Any objections if we make a quick pitstop?’

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